The Beginning of Something
by James Jago
Summary: Some loosely connected vignettes prequelling The Silver Bird
1. Dave's Story

You can't really pinpoint the beginning of something. It might have begun when a girl hid in a wardrobe, and when a boy found a strange window in the air. It might have begun when the scientists of another world forged a knife that could cut through worlds. It might have begun with the Big Bang.  
  
SOMETHING definitely began in the spring of 1982, when the brutal and bankrupt regime in Argentina decided to attack a windswept chain of islands lost to the British in the previous century to distract people from the fact that the country was falling to bits. That something was the process by which a close friend of Jonathan Parry wound up travelling to an alternate dimension with his widow and lovelorn teenage son, narrowly avoided being killed on a number of occasions, and having a very difficult time retaining his grip on reality. However, he always denied that if he'd known about certain parts in advance -him causing a train wreck, getting buried in falling masonry or losing his right leg whilst being chased through London in a pickup truck by a couple of attack helicopters, for example- he would have participated in such goings-on with any less enthusiasm.  
  
A weekend break in the Falkland Islands doesn't fit anybody's definition of a thirteen year-old kid's idea of fun. Even a batchelor with no experience with any child under thirty, like the man chosen by John Parry's colleagues to look after Will whilst Elaine recovered from her experiences, should have known that. Why he even asked if he wanted to come is unclear.  
  
"Well, it's got to beat sitting around at home," Will had replied, to Mary's surprise. "And I need a break from the project anyway."  
  
The project was largely a collaboration between Will, Dr Malone and Will's new stand-in dad, one David Marshall. He was a former Royal Navy fighter pilot who'd served in the Falklands and the Gulf, earning his spurs in Harriers, and his flying experience was important to the intriguing plans that the four of them had for crossing boundaries that most people didn't even really believe existed.  
  
Will and Mary knew this for a fact, and Will's girlfriend was on the other side of one. His refusal to regard this as an insurmountable barrier to their relationship, combined with Dr Malone's scientific expertise, would eventually culminate in the Malone Drive (patent pending). Dave was handling the design of the aircraft to contain it, and he was currently burying himself in design calculations for necessary minimum speed and takeoff weight. It had taken the direct threat of violence from Elaine, who was feeling much better these days, to make him or Mary leave their laptops behind. Will was glad his mother was back to her old self, but he wasn't exacly one hundred percent certain that her people skills were any better now that she was back on the same plane of reality as him. She spent a lot of time henpecking Dave, albeit in an affectionate sort of way, and she'd remembered everything she'd learned in the assertiveness workshop John had sent her to. The words 'assertiveness workshop' should make any husband flee in terror, even an ex-Royal Marine. John had allegedly got the idea after reading about Adrian Mole's mum doing it; he must have been posessed either of unlimited courage or a total lack of sense, although since he spent three quarters of his time up some mountain somewhere it probably didn't bother him much. The epitome of this was when she had begun getting up at 5am for a run in preparation for the expedition, and then spending an entire day practicing with firearms or survival gear. Mary had speculated that she was climbing the high bit of a manic-depressive phase.  
  
"Nope," Will's new guardian had rather wearily replied, "she was always like this." David himself was the sort of man any teenager would like as an uncle. He owned a motorbike. He'd been to Knebworth to see the finale of Queen's Magic tour. He'd got himself thrown out of Stringfellow's and arrested for pouring soap powder into the fountains of Trafalgar Square on his 21st birthday. He even flew aeroplanes for a living, though civil aviation lacked a certain something these days.  
  
It was a long flight in poor weather, in an elderly RAF transport aircraft. Will spent most of it writing extremely bad love poetry, which Lyra thought terribly touching when she eventually got a look at it. Dave restrained himself from commenting, but busied himself with a sketch of the aircraft he was working on. It resembled an old Catalina flying-boat with turbine engines, though it was a good deal bigger and had more air-to-air weaponry. He hadn't decided on a name for it yet, but it would eventually become known as the Aurora Borealis.  
  
He carefully drew in a couple of distant clouds for some perspective and paused, running a hand through his sandy brown hair, and tapped a pencil against his teeth. It needed something more...  
  
"Nice," Will remarked distantly.  
  
"Thanks. Another six months or so and she'll be more than a pretty picture, and we can start testing her out. Give it say another four months, and we'll make the first jump drive test," Dave replied. "Less than a year, kid, and you can read that stuff to her. Less than a year."  
  
"I thought you said we could stop worrying about all that for a while," Elaine chuckled, but she knew how Will felt. That didn't make his poetry any good, though- not that she'd say so, of course. Mums don't.  
  
"You know, I don't think you ever told us how you and John got to know each other," Mary remarked. "I know you both served here, but you came over on different ships."  
  
"Yeah, he was on Hermes and I flew off Invincible. We actually met in the field, or at least A field, under interesting circumstances. Remember when we saw Behind Enemy Lines?" Taking Will to stuff like that was what the fathers of young boys describe as 'man stuff', so Elaine had declined to go. According to Dave, letting him drink Carlsberg and play video games Elaine didn't approve of also costituted man stuff, which was why he was under specific instructions not to tell her about any of it.  
  
Will cocked an eyebrow at Dave. "You had to eject over enemy territory?" When he'd heard Dave mutter 'Been there, done that' early on in the film, he'd assumed it was the horseplay with the football and the launch catapault, and he said so.  
  
"Well, I've done THAT too!" Dave laughed. "I managed to catch it, though," he added. It had been quite an expensive ball, so it was just as well.  
  
"So what happened?" Elaine urged him.  
  
"Well," Dave began, "it was something like this..."  
  
***  
  
The Harrier streaked over the enemy positions, dropping cluster bombs in a lethal shower. It performed a triumphant barrel roll, climbed to twelve hundred feet and turned for home. The pilot flipped up his visor's eye shields, and switched on his radio.  
  
"Strike complete. I'm RTB to refuel and rearm, so I'll see you lot again in an hour. Think you can carry on without me for a wee bit, over?"  
  
"Sod off, swabby!" The company sergeant major from 2 Para on the other end replied amiably. "We're doing fine. Now go have your dinner, there's a good boy, over."  
  
"Are you trying to get me to drop a load of those litle nasties in the wrong place?" the pilot laughed. "See you later. Out." //Honestly. You wouldn't do that to an RAF pilot, would you? Not when you might have to jump out of a plane he was flying!// It occurred much later to both pilot and paratrooper, the latter of whom was most apologetic about it afterwards, that if they hadn't spent as much time making fun of each other then things might have happened differently.  
  
BANG! "What the-?" an antitank rocket, fired by a vengeful Argentinian soldier with an uncanny aim, punched a hole in the left wing. "Christ, I'm hit!" The Harrier began to wobble, whilst the pilot hastily radioed HMS Invincible to warn that he'd been hit and was in emergency drill. This task completed, he began wrestling his machine back under control.  
  
The aircraft's erratic progress took it further over enemy territory, and brought it to the attention of a Mirage pilot who felt like coming home with a kill. He closed to six miles and launched a single heat-seeking missile.  
  
"Oh, BUGGER!" The Harrier slewed sideways, flares spilling from the tail. The damaged wing couldn't take the stress, and broke in two. The aircraft began to spiral downwards, the pilot trying to regain control at a lower altitude where the thicker air would give him some lift. The Mirage followed, stitching the rear fuselage with its cannons and setting the engine on fire. It is possible to survive this in many fighters, but the relatively small Harrier only has one engine, where most strike aircraft have two. The Harrier pilot took the only remaining option available, and ejected. Given the unsporting nature of the previous attack he half expected the Mirage to machine gun him on the way down, but the French-built aircraft merely made a couple of flybys. He gave it the finger.  
  
//Right, now I have to land. This always seemed easier in training... possibly because there was a flat piece of ground at the bottom rather than jagged rocks and the occasional really deep bog. Would we even bother to try and get this place back if Labour weren't looking up a bit in the polls?//  
  
There was a rather crowded five minutes, during which the pilot was dragged along in the fierce wind by his canopy through a dense thicket of heather and gorse, mashed his scrotum against a rock and was dumped face-first into a small pool of water.  
  
"Bollocks to Argentinia's Air Force, the Conservative Party, and... oh, just bollocks to everything!" he groaned, clutching his testicles and struggling free of his parachute. "I don't get paid enough for this kind of crap."  
  
He sat down on a handy rock, still massaging his abused nutsack, and tried to work out just exactly where the hell he was. Unfolding his map with one hand, he extracted a packet of Benson & Hedges from his jumpsuit pocket and tapped a single cigarette out. Holding it in his mouth, he returned the packet and fished out a box of matches; lighters are too fragile to survive parachute landings, and our hero was a thorough sort of man. Striking a match without using both hands was beyond him, however, and he carefully laid down the map to light up. He felt slightly better for it. He wasn't exactly certain which side of the battle lines he was on, not that they were especially static at the moment, so he figured he'd wait until nightfall before using his distress beacon; be just his luck if both sides could direction-find on it. Night vision equipment was pretty rudimentary in the 1980s, but military intelligence said that the Argentines didn't have any. This probably meant that their night-vision kit was better than the British Army's, but no NVGs yet designed were anywhere near as good as the human eye in normal daylight, so he might have a slight advantage if... WHANG! A rifle bullet smacked off the rock about six inches from his arse.  
  
//This day REALLY isn't getting any better,// the pilot grumbled, diving for cover and drawing his sidearm as if it would help much. He saw a line of men approaching from his right, so he began to move left in a crouching run. Another shot hit the ground near him with a squelch. //WHY do I do this job?// He dived headfirst into a nearby drainage ditch and fired a couple of pistol shots in the general direction of the Argentines, hoping it would help. It didn't.  
  
"Come out with arms up!" a voice ordered in very bad but just about intelligible English. The pilot hesitated for a few moments, wondering what his chances were. If he crawled far enough then there might be a break in the wall or a length of pipe to hide in or SOMETHING, but who knew how far that line of men went? And if he did surrender then at this rate it'd turn out he'd clusterbombed the platoon sergeant's best mate earlier, and he'd probably get kneecapped and thrown in a bog or something. If only he'd switched on that bloody distress beacon...!  
  
Luckily for our hero, it turned out that the pull-tab that activated the beacon's repeating signal function had come out at some stage in the proceedings. He shouldn't have been surprised, as they did this quite often. He'd participated in the large scale search and rescue operation resulting from one such beacon being inadvertently activated whilst in storage.  
  
He briefly considered telling them to sod off, but realised that while they might, they'd probably toss a couple of grenades his way first. That course of action struck him as about as sensible as trying a payroll heist at an abbatoir, armed only with a two-inch switchblade.  
  
Our hero's brief pause for reflection was interrupted by the sound of rotor engines approaching very fast. The luckless Harrier pilot learned a few pretty impressive curse words in Spanish before the imprecations were drowned out by a machine gun.  
  
//Ah, perhaps there IS a God, after all.// Our hero was still a couple of decades away from encountering a young lad who had not only met Him, but had prevented His overthrow in a coup d'etat by his girlfriend's nutty father. The process that would culminate in the two meeting was begun that day, however, despite the fact that the boy in question wasn't even sperm at this point.  
  
The Argentines had a fleeting impression of a helicopter full of British soldiers hovering over them shooting at the ground, but didn't hang around long enough to take in minor details like the pilot they'd been chasing making obscene gestures at their retreating backs.  
  
Our hero climbed gratefully aboard the Sea King, and shook hands with the tall, bearded Marine officer who'd helped him aboard.  
  
"Flight Lieutenant David Marshall, 55 Squadron Royal Navy, hi."  
  
"Captain Jonathan Parry, 45 Commando, hi."  
  
***  
  
"There's more, especially involving all the bars we visited afterwards, but that isn't for your young ears," Dave concluded as the plane came to a halt. "Or for those of his other half!" Elaine rolled her eyes.  
  
They disembarked a few minutes later, and deposited their luggage in their rooms at a tiny guesthouse in the centre of Port Stanley. They had a few hours to kill before the memorial ceremony, so they went to find a coffee. They wound up in a small cafe overlooking the town, drinking instant coffee in plastic cups.  
  
"I've never understood this," Dave remarked. "We're an hour's flight from some of the best coffee country in the world, and we're drinking the kind of stuff I only buy because I haven't got a decent percolator. Economics are weird sometimes."  
  
"Who're we going to buy it off, the Argies?" said the proprietess bitterly. "No chance!"  
  
"The fascist dictatorship that decided to reconquer the Malvinas went tits-up after we got rid of them," Dave pointed out. "What's the point in holding a grudge? I'm not, and they shot me down and chased me across the moors before getting seen off by a chopper full of Marines."  
  
The woman's attitude thawed noticeably. "Oh, you're one of the veterans?" She immediately refilled their coffees and wouldn't accept payment. It'd be nice to say that he got a lot of that sort of thing, but few people's gratitude for their liberation by British servicemen was exceeded by their annoyance at the mayhem caused by the British servicemen assigned here. Bored, young, MALE servicemen. The pub owners didn't mind much, though their insurance people probably did.  
  
Dave drank his coffee, remembering the experience. He'd stayed in the RAF until after Desert Storm, leaving as a Group Captain with a Distinguished Flying Cross and a Military Medal. John had gone missing by then, but he'd been unable to contact his family until fairly recently. He hoped that John would be reasonably happy with his attempt at standing in for him.  
  
***  
  
Nearly a quarter of a century later, Will was back in the Falklands, possibly to go to war. He stood on the flight deck of the nuclear carrier HMS Cunningham and looked out over the moors and hills of the land where his two fathers would meet. Since his mother had got around to acting on the obvious crush she had on Dave, people had been assuming that Dave was his father, and he'd stopped correcting them after a while.  
  
He hadn't been in the Aurora Borealis for over a year now. His training for Fleet Air Arm had occupied most of his time for the last few years, and he was now serving Queen and Country as a fighter pilot. Having recieved a fair bit of tutorage from a decorated Navy veteran had helped, as well as his extensive practical experience with combat systems.  
  
There was a low rumble as a Sea Typhoon ground attack aircraft lined up for a landing. Will watched with interest and more than a few nerves as it glided in, snagged the wire and jerked to a stop before moving towards the main elevator, guided by the deck crew.  
  
Will's fellow pilot and best mate, Jack McAllister, wandered past and stopped to watch it land. "Relax, Mark. Lizzie can handle that thing like she was born in the cockpit," he remarked. "Mark Ransome" smiled. Machismo or not, he knew full well that "Elisabeth Silverton" was as good a pilot as he was, if not better. For all that, not even a veteran pilot can watch a tailhook landing and remember to breathe. Takeoffs are worse, if anything. Will had never stopped being very glad he flew the vertical-takeoff F22 Joint Strike Fighter. It wasn't too good at tankbusting, hence the conversion of the British version of the Eurofighter to carrier duties to replace the old Jaguar, but you didn't need a launch catapault.  
  
The Sea Typhoon's cockpit canopy opened and the pilot vaulted athletically over the side. She removed her helmet, running her hand through her close-cropped blonde hair. Both of her colleagues waved.  
  
She stood next to him, admiring the view. Unconsciously, Lyra squeezed Will's hand. Jack made no sign that he'd noticed, though Will knew he must have. On the other hand, it was common knowledge below decks that Jack was trying desperately hard to get off with his beautiful Welsh navigator Carrie-Anne, so he was hardly in a position to pass judgement.  
  
"Your dad'd be dead proud if he could see how you've got on in life," she said to him. "He'd be pleased with Dave too."  
  
"Yeah," Will replied. //Dave made a pretty good go of standing in for you, Dad. I doubt you'd be thrilled about him letting me watch his Quentin Tarantino DVDs before I was old enough, taking me and Lyra paintballing on my fifteenth birthday or all the other batchelor uncle stuff, but I owe him a lot. Well, now I'm back where you two met each other. I might even be going to war here, if they don't sort out the crisis. I'll do my best to live up to your reputation.//  
  
Seeing all this by means that elude mortal description, John Parry smiled at his son. "Don't worry about that, kiddo," he replied, though he knew Will couldn't hear him. "You already have. And no, I'm not thrilled about the Quentin Tarantino DVDs. That stuff scares ME! Typical bloody Dave, that is..."  
  
If it's hard to trace the beginning of something, it's damn near impossible to pinpoint the end. 


	2. The Birth of The Aurora Borealis

The Secret Intelligence Service was getting increasingly alarmed about the developments regarding these mysterious 'windows'. The family of one man who had reputedly become trapped in whatever lay beyond one had apparently linked up with one Dr Malone, whose researches had taken her towards that subject. No sooner had a careful investigation revealed that most of the 'windows' were sealed than yet another mystery began.  
  
Group Captain (retd.) David Savage-Marshall (he normally only used one surname, but didn't take too much care which one) had also got into contact with the three of them, and begun acting somewhat suspiciously. He had taken a long trip to Colon, Panama, a city more renowned for its black-market arms bazaars than appeal as a tourist spot. Several rather large packages had been delivered to his house shortly afterwards- coincidence, or was he investing in military ordinance?  
  
Then there was the series of six-week 'business trips' to Russia. He was admittedly a partner in a small air freight firm, but Dr Malone was on the same flight to Moscow, ostensibly to give a lecture at the Academy of Science. Marshall spent most of his time at an aircraft works. This is what transpired there, though the SIS didn't get to hear of it until many years later.  
  
Will staggered off the Aeroflot jet airliner, wincing as the circulation returned to his legs. //Whatever you've built had better be a damn sight comfier than that thing, Dave,// He thought to himself. //And to think I was actually quite excited about leaving Britain for the first time...//  
  
Elaine joined him, rubbing her calves and wondering aloud how you knew if you had deep vein thrombosis.  
  
"When you unexpectedly drop dead," Will replied slightly testily. "Come on, Mum, let's get a coffee or something."  
  
Mary called Will on his expensive mobile phone a few minutes later. "I'll be outside the terminal in five minutes," she informed them. "The plane looks absolutely fantastic, and Dave says he'll have it ready for a test flight by tomorrow."  
  
"Great! Can I speak to him?"  
  
"He's at the plant still. Last time I saw him he was fitting a minigun to one of the turrets."  
  
"Okay. See you later." He hung up, and finished his coffee.  
  
"You've missed Dave, haven't you?" Elaine said perceptively. "He's almost a replacement father."  
  
"Oh, come on, Mum!" Will laughed. "Would a responsible parent let me get away with some of the stuff he does? You're only saying that because you fancy him!"  
  
"I bloody don't!" she retorted, also laughing. Will simply raised one eyebrow.  
  
An hour later, they were standing in front of a huge aircraft, in a low concrete building in the Russian countryside. It wasn't complete, but it looked quite something.  
  
It wasn't an elegant or graceful aircraft. The fuselage was something like twice the width of a railway carriage, with an underbelly like an unusually large rowing boat. The wings were straight and surprisingly thick, with two huge jet engines underneath. The rudder and tail looked pretty much like any aircraft's. It was the colour that got to you, really. The whole skin GLEAMED, reflecting light in a strange way that gave it an oily sheen. Will glanced at the knife he carried at his belt, remembering how it had looked before the original blade had been broken.  
  
"Wow." He looked at Mary. "You two built the whole thing out of the same metal as..."  
  
"Yeah. Manganese-titanium alloy. Lighter than aluminium but twice as strong, low radar reflection properties; the perfect metal for building planes out of! Ah, here comes Dave. I'll let him explain all about his baby."  
  
Dave appeared from within the plane, grinning. He was covered in oil and holding a screwdriver in one hand, and he looked as if he hadn't slept in a week or so.  
  
"Hi folks. Sorry I didn't come down to meet you, but I daren't trust the local help on their own." There were none too pleasant stories about Russian quality control standards. The technicians were getting paid nearly double their usual wage for this job but Dave was taking no chances.  
  
"No worries. Looks nice," Will remarked, indicating the plane. Dave grinned.  
  
"Yeah. The really techy stuff is in the nosecone, but you'd need to be Gordon bloody Freeman to understand all THAT," the other three mutually decided to hide the CD for Half-Life 2 for a bit, "so I'll just explain the bit I designed. Basically, she's sixty feet long with a forty foot wingspan, can exceed Mach 2 for long enough to make a jump, and has transatlantic fuel capacity at cruising speed. Armament is fairly light, but enough to defend ourselves with. We have a full threat warning and countermeasures system; chaff and flare dispensers, ECM and all that. We've also got 360 degree radar coverage."  
  
"How'd you manage that? I don't see a radaome," Will replied. He'd been reading Dave's extensive techno-thriller collection quite a lot recently. He was referring to the large frisbee-like radar set fitted to the roofs of airborne early warning aircraft. Most aircraft have only a forward-looking radar set, with about thirty to forty degrees of vision on military equipment. Dave grinned broadly. "I can't really claim credit for that. Mary had a friend whose dissertation was on radar systems, and the limitations of convential sets. This bloke had come up with a better idea; build the radar systems into the wing surfaces. You might see the RAF building their AEW planes that way in about three years, but Mary wrote off to him about how we needed the technology for a special project and he sent the blueprints."  
  
"The fact that he was trying to get into my underwear from Freshers Week to graduation helped some!" Mary added, causing Elaine to have a fit of giggles and Dave to mutter something about 'Bloody women.'  
  
The four of them walked through the interior, noting where everything was. There was a small 'hallway' behind the cockpit, with a door on each side. Over the cockpit door was hung a wooden shield, with a carving of the hilt of the Knife. Somebody had taken the shards from the safety deposit box Will normally kept them in and glued them in their approximately correct place, an idea blatantly lifted from the second Lord of the Rings film. Will smiled; he wished he'd thought of that.  
  
Turning towards the rear of the aircraft, they walked down a narrow corridor with five small rooms to one side. "Crew quarters," Dave explained. "The interiors aren't fitted yet, and that's going to be a DIY job." Will tried not to wince; he'd seen Dave's attempts at DIY, which had included drilling straight through a water pipe whilst putting up shelves. The water pipe leading from the roof tank to every flat in the building, in fact. He'd destroyed the carpet, run up a three figure repair bill AND got himself crossed off every other resident's Christmas card list on that occasion.  
  
Next was the kitchen and lounge area, a mess of exposed pipework and half-assembled cabinets. "Looks neater than your bedroom," Elaine remarked. Dave exchanged looks with Will, wondering whose bedroom she was on about.  
  
Finally they took in the cockpit, which was the only part that didn't currently resemble a building site. It looked instead like the inside of a space shuttle. There were five ejector seats arranged in a horseshoe around the interior, with the pilot's seat at the front. The other seats had a screen and keyboard in front of them, as well as a couple of levers and switches. The pilot's seat had a somewhat smaller screen above the artificial horizon, with the keyboard mounted overhead.  
  
"All consoles can assume any of the inflight roles: Navigation, radar, flight systems and jump drive control. If the pilot is knocked out then hitting this button here," Dave pointed to a red button under a plastic cover on the nearest console, repeated on the other three, "on any station will engage the autopilot and terrain-following radar system. It should give you time to shift whoever's flying out of the way and let somebody else take over. It isn't a perfect system but we haven't got space for a second set of flight controls, and I was thinking in terms of only one pilot at the time." Mary had persuaded him to teach her to fly the aircraft earlier that week.  
  
"As you can tell, I'm anticipating five crew eventually, but four people can handle her," Dave continued. Nobody doubted who crew member number five would be, least of all Will. Elaine wasn't sure whether to approve or not, but she knew better than to argue with the others on this issue.  
  
"We'll be able to take her up tomorrow, I hope. The only thing left to fine tune is the actual transition drive." Dave glanced towards the nosecone. This was one area he couldn't explain much about, largely because he had only the vaguest idea of how it worked.  
  
The Malone Dimensional Transition System was the whole point of the aircraft. It focused a high frequency beam of electromagnetic radiation at a fissure, which could penetrate through to the world on the other side. Then, the wavelength would broaden and force the fissure open just long enough for the aircraft to pass through at full speed. Once it had passed through, the portal would spring closed again. As an added bonus the beam repelled Dust away from the fissure, ensuring that there was no contamination, a feature that Mary was quite proud of.  
  
The next day, they were flying through a series of deep valleys near the Finnish border. The aircraft that they had christened the Aurora Borealis shot between two outcroppings with one wing pointed straight at the ground.  
  
"Whoa!" Will said as they levelled out. Dave grinned, and deployed the turrets. "Okay everybody, this is our first combat training mission. There are a couple of Sukhoi-27 interceptor aircraft going up against us. They only have simulated guns and the pilots are rookies same as us, so this shouldn't be too steep a learning curve. Head for the guns, folks!"  
  
Will scrambled into the cramped dorsal turret and plugged his helmet's oxygen and communication leads into the sockets immediately beneath the yoke that controlled the turret's movements. The sight blinked into his helmet's Heads-Up Display. Will twisted the yoke and pulled it back and forth a couple of times, checking that it was working all right. He fired a short burst, ensuring that both guns were clear. As he did all this, Dave was talking to the pilots in surprisingly fluent Russian.  
  
"Okay, they've got a three hundred foot height advantage and heat-seeking missiles as well as guns. Here we go!" Dave pulled up and to the left, performing a 'corkscrew' manoevre. The two Flankers moved in.  
  
Will spotted one and opened fire with the two huge thirty-calibre miniguns. It veered away, though he doubted he had hit it. The other fired a quick burst with its own cannons. A 'Simulated Damage' caption appeared in Will's HUD, with a hollow rectangle beside it. A small portion of the rectangle filled. Dave banked to the right, spraying the aircraft responsible. Its partner loosed a heat seeker, which immediately began tracking them.  
  
"Look out!" Elaine warned from the rear turret. Dave didn't reply, but dropped a couple of magnesium flares to decoy the missile and violently pulled up. The missile exploded below them, and the Simulated Damage box filled slightly more. Will guessed that this was being calculated from a computer on the gound and transmitted to them; no computer aboard the Aurora could work out the splash damage from a simulated missile. Mary caught one of the Flankers with a long burst, and it withdrew. Elaine peppered it as it departed.  
  
"Boom!" Dave remarked dryly. "One down, one to... Shit!" The Simulated Damage bar grew precipitously. Dave deployed the airbrakes and waited for the fighter to overshoot, and then blazed away with the quartet of miniguns framing the Drive in the nosecone. "Got you, you little bastard. And you're dead as well, then?" The two Flankers took up formation at about a mile distant. "Strange, I didn't think..." His curses rang out as both fighters wheeled around and attacked again.  
  
An hour or two later, all three aircraft had to land to refuel. Dave took the opportunity to stand on the tarmac -a safe distance from the jet fuel being pumped into his aircraft- and have a quiet smoke. Elaine muttered disapprovingly, but without much heat. Will sighed.  
  
"Mum, we both know he'll only stop smoking when he drops dead from it. You won't change him even if you move in with him!"  
  
"I can try," she replied grimly. Will sighed. He had a very bad feeling about this.  
  
A week went past, and they steadily increased in skill. The Flanker pilots became extremely disenchanted and fed up of getting shot down by a seaplane, and threatened to start using live ammunition. The Drive was completed, and they made several dummy runs to test proccedures. They also practiced ejection drill, parachue landings and other essentials with the local air force, who were happy to assist them- ready money in large quantities has that effect on people in countries like Russia.  
  
"I think we're pretty much ready," Dave said after a fortnight. "I reckon we're best off flying out of Sywell; I can get us a hangar there for free." Sywell, an old wartime RAF station in Northamptonshire now given over to civil aviation, was the hub of the air transport firm in which Dave was a senior partner. It lacked a concrete runway, but Aurora was designed to land and take off just about anywhere, the Arctic tundra included.  
  
"One question," Elaine said as she helped him fix an AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missile to the number four weapon pylon. "How exactly are we going to get this thing back to Britain without getting noticed?"  
  
"By flying very low most of the way, for a start."  
  
That they brought this off without alerting the authorities is testimony to Dave's skill as a pilot and navigator. He took a roundabout route, flying over and sometimes through the Norwegian fjords before travelling parallel to the eastern coastline of the British Isles, finally veering inland and setting down at Sywell under cover of darkness. His business partner and friend Frank Watson was away on other business, so they had the use of the hangar for a day or two.  
  
"We might as well use our bunks for tonight," Dave told them. "Let's fuel her up and then get some sleep." He attached a small battery-powered pump to a hose between the fuel filler point on Aurora and the large storage tank on the back of a trailer he'd had delivered earlier that day.  
  
Will sat on a nearby toolkit, alone with his thoughts. //By tomorrow I could be with her again. A few hours and we'll be in another world. Even if we don't hit the right world straight away, it'll just be a matter of time.// He smiled slowly, exchanging looks with the daemon only he could see. //I hope we get it right the first time. It's Midsummer's Day tomorrow. Maybe I can get into the garden without her noticing, and just sit down next to her. I can just picture her face!//  
  
He went to bed in a cheerful and moderately excited mood, and then slept for twelve hours solid. He awoke to the smell of coffee and frying bacon. Dave handed him a couple of his famous fried egg and bacon rolls and a steaming mug as he entered the lounge area.  
  
"Morning, kid. Your mum's still asleep; she didn't get any sleep while we were in the air. Turbulence, she said!" Dave drank deeply from his own mug. "As IF!" Dave had a rather narrow definition of turbulence, having flown an F4 Phantom through a thunderstorm on a training mission some years previously.  
  
"Damn!" Mary kicked one of the consoles. "It worked fine in every damn test up until now. Why does the fissure targeting system have to only start playing up TODAY?"  
  
"What's wrong with it?"  
  
"The camera head's stuck. It froze in the middle of a search pattern, and it's twelve degrees out of alignment. I can't even blame the Russians, because I put that part together myself!"  
  
"I've known Americans who blame the Russians for the weather," Dave remarked, exiting the plane and crouching underneath. "Well, I'll be... I've found the problem!" He pulled the top of a Norwegian fir tree out of the camera ball's rotation system and showed it to them. "Now that's low level flying taken a bit too far!"  
  
"See why I didn't get any sleep?" Elaine remarked blearily, annoyance and amusement fighting for control of her face. "Are you sure you want to let him fly on the first jump drive test?"  
  
"You'd rather he scan for the fissures and prime the Drive?" Will remarked without looking up. "Thought not. Me neither, to be honest."  
  
Dave rolled his eyes. "Shall we get on with it?"  
  
The four of them zipped themselves into the silvery grey RAF-style flight suits provided for the occasion, and equipped themselves with survival equipment and sidearms. Dave slipped a piece of a Harrier's fuselage into his pocket, by way of a lucky charm.  
  
"Think we'll need it?" Will enquired.  
  
"Suffice it to say that the only time I flew without it I had to ditch a Puma helicopter in the sea with a blown engine seal. I broke two ribs and my collarbone, and have never, EVER left the ground without it again. Get the picture?"  
  
"Guess so."  
  
The four of them stood in front of the plane, radiating nervous excitement. Dave smiled slightly. "Okay, everybody, time to make some history." //And get rid of the box of Milk Tray Elaine bought for a joke,// he added in the privacy of his own thoughts. Will had acquired a tendency to dress in black and listen to Linkin Park and Eminem a lot, which Elaine had been gently poking fun at for a while. It was starting to get on both men's nerves.  
  
Dave opened the hangar door, as the huge silver aircraft's engines began to turn. He climbed aboard as it rolled out and lined up with the runway. It was early -though jetlag had contrived to suggest otherwise- and the sun was not fully up. Dave settled into his seat and plugged his helmet into the console, then began running through the checklist.  
  
"Engines one and two lit."  
  
"Radar green. Hydraulics... green. Weapons green. Forward infared green."  
  
"Jump drive green. Search pattern initiated."  
  
"Main and backup radios green on all bands. IFF transmitting at nominal strength."  
  
"Okay, everybody. Let's go!" Dave pushed the throttles forward to a little short of full. Without afterburners, which is unusual for a jet this size, Aurora lifted from the runway and climbed rapidly to six thousand feet.  
  
A lone planespotter sitting on a forked branch in a lone oak tree near the runway turned to watch the big plane go over. Shorts Brothers would make a fortune with a plane like that, he mused. All-terrain capability, long range, didn't need a long runway... "Huh?" The plane screamed forward, afterburner trails lighting up the sky. "They never said it could do THAT!" he remarked to himself. Suddenly, the plane vanished behind a brilliant orb of light. When it faded, the sky was empty.  
  
"O-kay. That was VERY strange." The young planespotter never mentioned this to anybody; after all, who would have believed him? 


End file.
